


A Leaf as Companion

by matrixrefugee



Category: Gormenghast (TV), Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
Genre: Gen, Mid-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 23:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14943435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Flay discovers he has company in his lonely spot in Gormenghast woods





	A Leaf as Companion

Mister Flay laid eyes on the Wild Girl for the first time when she was perhaps seven summers old. A sudden thunderstorm, out of season one late autumn day, had driven her into the nearest shelter, that cover being his hut, where he sat scraping the inside of a fresh rabbit skin that he was curing before he added it to the pile he used for a bed. He spied the girl crouching inside the door, blinking her eyes at the fire in the center of the packed-earth floor, as she tilted her head from side to side, quizzically, like a small dog would cock its head.

"You, girl... hungry?" he asked, glancing to a pot that hung from an iron tripod over the fire. She took this as an offer, rather than as a request, for she flitted to the cauldron and thrust one brown hand into it. But she fell back, blowing on her hand before pressing it between her opposite arm and her side, rocking in pain, but never emitting so much as a moan of pain. Her reaction might as well have been some form of dumb show.

Flay set down the skin and came to her side slowly, keeping his hands where she could see them. She quailed back, glaring at him and gathering herself as if she might bite, but watching him with large dark eyes that reflected back his grizzled face.

"Help, heal... not harm, girl," he said, gently yet firmly, putting a hand on her arm. She let him lead her back into the depths of the hut, where he dunked her hand into a wooden bowl of water, to cool the burn. Her thin, vibrating body relaxed and her fright and pain soon flowed away, replaced by calm. He drew her hand out and would have wiped it clean on a bit of sacking he used for a towel, but she licked the water off herself, with her clean, pink tongue.

Rising and fetching another bowl, he filled it with rabbit stew from the cauldron and set it on the floor before her. She approached the bowl, sniffing at the contents before she picked it up and thrust her face into it, gobbling up the food.

When she had licked the bowl clean, the storm had passed. The girl, on seeing the molten grey sky give way to a clean-washed blue, bolted out of the cave, scampering over the rocks and flitting into the trees like a leaf on the wind. He expected no word of thanks: the girl seemed incapable of human speech and her presence was nearly as silent as that of the dry leaves on the ground, noticeable only when the wind stirred them.

But she came back the following night, offering her own brand of gratitude. He awakened shortly after daybreak to find what looked like some creation of the Carvers -- a figure of a white horse with an owl on its back -- set beside his pallet. The sight of it pained him, for it reminded him of the life which he had had taken from him, a life of serving the House of Groan, of walking the stone arteries of the Castle, like some white cell in its lifeblood. He rose and put the figure outside, hoping that the Wild Girl would find it and bring it back to where she had found it.

But instead, at nightfall, she came back and brought the figure back inside the hut, holding the carven animal up to him in one hand and pointing to the cauldron with the other. She clearly wanted more stew and this was the coin she wanted to use in order to pay for it.

"Can't take carving. Not for me. Not for you," he said, shaking his head. "Take back to Castle, you."

The girl looked up at him in disappointment and slipped away like a ray of daylight when a cloud roams across the heavens.

Even after he refused her gift, she came to the hut every few days, looking for food and shating the warmth of his fire, or seeking shelter from a storm or the cold. He tried to teach her to speak, but she did not seem to grasp that concept. Yet, she learned to stop fearing the fire, and even learned to handle it with a cautious assurance.

She was not of the Castle, nor was she of the Carvers, particularly since she took from them. He conjectured that she might be the bastard child of Keda, the young lord's nursemaid, as much an outcast as he, Flay, was. There was a kind of kinship between them, forged of the outcast state they shared, much as they shared the same hearth. He did not view her as a daughter: his service to the castle had been his mate and that had been taken from him leaving no issue. But her presence offered some respite from the solitary state of his life, as a cat or a dog might to a spinster or to a bachelor. He had felt no need for companionship, but her presence was one he could tolerate.


End file.
